Mims’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 district ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “When prison officials are confronted with a substantial threat to internal security____ the government interest in formulating food faith and reasoned responses to such threats-including the relatively drastic measure of administrative segregation-is compelling. It follows that the level of judicial deference to the prison officials’ attempts to deal with such threats should be high. However, we acknowledge that the government interest involved in a good faith decision to subject a prisoner to administrative segregation may fluctuate with the passage of time and change of circumstances. The validity of the government’s interest in prison safety and security as a basis for restricting the liberty rights of an inmate subsists only as long as the inmate continues to pose a safety or security risk. It was upon this basis that the Hewitt Court noted that periodic review of administrative segregation decisions is necessary ...”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 685 F. Supp. 1335 - Farmer v. Carlson

2. “In assessing the seriousness of a threat to institutional security, prison administrators necessarily draw on more than the specific facts surrounding a particular incident; instead they must consider the character of the inmates confined in the institution, recent and long-standing relations between prisoners and guards, prisoners inter se, and the like. In the volatile atmosphere of a prison, an inmate easily may constitute an unacceptable threat to the safety of other[s] ... even if he himself has committed no misconduct; rumor, reputation, and even more imponderable factors may suffice to spark potentially disastrous inci dents____[T]he administrators must predict not just one inmate’s future actions ... but those of an entire institution.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 611 F. Supp. 830 - Perez v. Neubert

3. “First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. King v. Jenkins